


The Sixth Stage of Grief

by tea_petty



Category: The Arcana (Visual Novel)
Genre: F/F, Grief/Mourning, Oral Sex, Sex, Wakes & Funerals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-13
Updated: 2019-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:20:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21781321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tea_petty/pseuds/tea_petty
Summary: Portia and the Apprentice cope with loss.
Relationships: Portia Devorak/Reader
Comments: 8
Kudos: 23





	The Sixth Stage of Grief

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to my Tumblr; tea-pettier

When the Apprentice looked around, she could hardly believe she was still in the palace. The usual regal violet and magenta hues had been replaced in favor of deep blacks and canvas whites; the more appropriate colors for mourning. The people milling about were wearing similar garments, with most everyone, including the Countess most notably, leaving their ornate accessories at home. 

Count Lucio would’ve hated this, the Apprentice mused, and she felt a pang of guilt almost immediately. He would’ve demanded everyone come in their best to say their final farewells, if he’d still been around to make such demands. The Apprentice tried to call upon the memory of the last funeral that had been held for the Count in an attempt to compare that one to this one, but a vicious throb in her skull that came as abruptly as the west winds put such efforts to a stop.

It was no matter. She ‘d have the rest of her life to ponder such things, which was more than what she could say about the dearly, departed Count – hopefully for good, this time.

The Apprentice watched as throngs of people left the parlor, almost everyone who walked out the door turning right down the palace’s main corridor. That was because the coffin was in the next room, though the Apprentice wasn’t quite sure why. Was there even a body to view?

Last, she and Asra had seen, Lucio was sinking into the abyssal darkness of one of the arcane ponds in _that_ place, just as a rather large _something_ started to poke around the very same area, assumedly in search of a snack.

The Apprentice had no doubt that the creature – serpentine, and scaled from what she saw, had gotten more of a meal than it initially bargained for. That’s just the way Lucio had been – too much. 

She mentally smacked herself for thinking such uncouth things about a man at his own funeral. While it’s true, he hadn’t been her favorite person, there’d be plenty of other appropriate days to dislike him – for an example, any other day. 

In any case, the casket in the next room was most likely just a formality. Something to set on the funeral pyre and send off to sea. A symbol of letting grief go, more for the people than Lucio himself. He would’ve hated this too.

From somewhere in the distance, the Apprentice could hear a choked sob. She had left the viewing room herself earlier, lest she get stuck amidst the throng of smallfolk wringing their clothes and wailing mournfully before the Count’s casket.

While the scene was the first thing one might call to mind at imagining a funeral, it was all very strange here. Lucio had been feared, not loved. He’d thrown his weight around in gold, and doused Vesuvia’s dry lands in blood. Still though, not a soul dared look a degree more chipper than devastated, and despite how unnerving the Apprentice found it, she couldn’t deny her relief that for once, there was no one here to defy the etiquette of the situation. Lucio wasn’t deserving of anyone’s tears, least of all, the people of Vesuvia’s, but today they would cry for him and it would be the very last time.

The monotony of impassive reverence was broken up when the Apprentice’s eyes met a bright and limpid blue from across the room. At Portia’s momentary scrutiny, the Apprentice felt her cheeks warm, and her gaze dropped to the floor – taking cover from the mortar fire in her chest. 

A few moments later, the Apprentice risked a quick peek towards the younger Devorak once more, watching her as she gathered abandoned silverware and porcelain cups from disarray, and replaced them on a tray for the return trip to the kitchen. When the Apprentice had grown nice and comfortable with this view, Portia’s gaze flicked in her direction once more, prompting the Apprentice to once again avert her eyes, a new flood of heat creeping up the Apprentice’s neck. They continued this game of mute tag for a few more moments, until Portia left the parlor with one lingering glimpse over her shoulder and disappeared out the door.

With Portia gone from the room, the stuffy atmosphere settled around the Apprentice once more, pulling her inwards into herself. Memories of the fear that pulled her taut every time Lucio entered a room sparked in the contraction of the sinews of her muscles, and it wasn’t until the edges of the Apprentice’s vision had started to grow fuzzy and the stinging in her lungs flared that she realized she’d started holding her breath.

The corners of the room unfurled into clarity as the Apprentice let out a steady stream of air, and then she rose to her feet calmly, and exited the room, less calm with every increasingly frantic step she took towards the door.

It was choking; the heaviness of grief in the air as it churned noxiously with the heat of Portia’s gaze that lingered in warm flecks at the Apprentice’s skin. ‘The air was so thick you could cut it with a knife’ – that’s a thing people said, right? Now it was all the Apprentice could do not to drag lead into her lungs and fall to her knees.

As the Apprentice cut into the hallway, the intensity of the atmosphere doubled and then doubled again. She could feel Portia’s presence behind her as she made a break into another short hallway and staggered into one of the many guest rooms Nadia had in her home. The Apprentice left the door open so that Portia could follow.

The room was not the Apprentice’s – and certainly not Portia’s. The Apprentice knew this based on the birdcage sitting suspiciously empty on the nightstand, and the abundance of animal-printed garments strewn about. The click of the door behind the Apprentice seized her attention and brought it back to the center of the room, where her feet had sunken into the plush rug. When she turned around, she saw Portia’s hand on the twist lock at the brilliant, brass knob.

“I uh, needed some air,” the Apprentice mumbled lamely as Portia began to take deliberate strides towards her.

_One and two…_

“I’ll bet.”

The contact Portia’s teeth made at the t-sound emphasized stride number three.

“You must’ve needed air too, seeing all the running around you’ve been doing.”

_Four and five…_

“Oh absolutely,”

Portia was standing right in front of the Apprentice now, who despite retreating to this stranger’s room for air, now found her face red and chest heaving. The Apprentice gazed into Portia’s eyes – a cool blue that seemed to burn her more, rather than soothe her. The thought that maybe the woman herself could only do that, hovered at the back of the Apprentice’s mind but she didn’t dare bring it to the forefront, let alone speak it aloud. 

Portia caught this – had caught this since their non-encounter in the parlor earlier. She’d have to make the first move, and carefully so as not to scare the Apprentice away. Firsts were always scary, and today seemed to be a hot fudge sundae topped, dipped, and sprinkled with them. 

One tentative hand reached up to cup the Apprentice’s cheek, and where soft, warm skin covered her, the Apprentice felt herself twitch. She had thought she was flinching, but instead her eyelashes fluttered, and she settled into the touch. Another steady stream of air left her lips, and this time, it seemed to do its job.

Portia saw this and took her chance, careening forward, her eyes pinching shut just in time for her lips to catch the Apprentice’s. The softness of Portia’s mouth on her own awakened something that had been stifled in the muddled mourning of the day. Whereas the smallfolk had been too courteous, too restrained, too pious in their grief, Portia’s mouth was aching, craving, and insistent. The Apprentice kissed back with a fervor that took her breath away, only to replenish the supply with the warmth of Portia. Her fingers tangled in brilliant, red hair.

The touch felt awake – like electricity buzzing at the surface of the Apprentice’s skin. Portia – not just her touch, but Portia herself – peeled away the layer of separation that respectful societal norms dictated. If the entire day up until now had been too muffled, witnessing tragedy from under water, then the lapping fires that Portia evoked in the Apprentice now was raw and throbbing. Too real and too much. 

The Apprentice gasped and when she fell to her knees, Portia wasn’t far behind. They landed in a tangle of limbs on the palace’s plush carpet. The Apprentice’s attention was dragged to the exact point in time where Portia lips parted, and her tongue slipped into the Apprentice’s mouth. She tasted exactly how the Apprentice imagined, only so much better.

The Apprentice groaned melting backwards into the floor and getting caught between the fuzzed fibers. Then she felt a chill at her chest and her eyes snapped open to find that the bodice of her conservative white dress had been spread away and now dripped from her form. Portia may not have been nobility herself, but the fabric yielded to her like it willed to her the highest honor of undressing the Apprentice. 

The Apprentice’s cheeks flushed at her bareness, and as Portia descended hungrily at her, lips trailing along the sinewy bone of her clavicle, the Apprentice felt a tugging inside her, between her legs, and then the familiar wet rush.

Portia, who at some point between their kiss and then had moved to straddle the Apprentice, noticed the twitch of the latter’s body beneath her own.

“What is it?” she murmured, blue eyes flashing dangerously, “does that feel good?”

The Apprentice could only shudder, and then Portia leaned away, and the chill came back. Portia’s gaze slid over the Apprentice’s breasts, bared to her lewdly from the folds of her clothing. It was somehow more vulnerable this way than if she’d been completely bare. The Apprentice’s hands itched somewhere between covering herself and tearing the rest of her clothes away.

Portia didn’t seem inclined to wait one way or another. Instead, she craned her neck inwards, dipping low towards the Apprentice’s chest to press a trail of kisses in the valley between her breasts. The Apprentice’s head fell backwards, mercifully making contact with the plush carpet. At the feeling of Portia’s tongue lapping tenderly against the hardened peaks of her breasts, the Apprentice’s eyelashes fluttered. When the sensation stopped, the Apprentice raised her head to look at Portia. She felt herself pulse and clench emptily, needing some recompense for the way Portia had flared at her arousal, and then left it to pool uselessly between her thighs. 

Portia’s eyes flashed, blue fire as they looked the Apprentice down. A shiver went up the Apprentice’s spine and she felt that pulling inside of her again, waiting for something to banish the maddening emptiness. 

“What’ve we got down here?”

Portia’s voice was light as her attention left the Apprentice’s breasts and dropped lower, past the strewn lips of her open bodice, to where the Apprentice’s skirts pooled, riding high at her thighs, as if paving the way for the woman on top of her. Portia’s hands grasped warmly at the Apprentice’s thighs, squeezing, massaging the soft flesh gently before smoothing dangerously upwards. As she did this, the Apprentice worked up the nerve to reach forward to the hem of Portia’s shirt, and lift. 

Her eyes flicked to meet the Apprentice’s briefly, their intensity not at all broken though their eye contact was in the instance it took to sweep the white fabric up and over her head. It had been so quick that the Apprentice scarcely noticed Portia take her hands off her to let the garment pass over her shoulders before they’d returned. 

The Apprentice stared at Portia’s skin; porcelain speckled with the loveliest smattering of freckles, breaking at her collarbone before spotting again at her full breasts. Unbeknownst to her, Portia was watching the Apprentice, watch her, hands still creeping upwards, sweeping her skirts higher. If Portia had felt the same urge to cover up that the Apprentice had, she never showed it. The Apprentice raised her hands, reverent in their slowness. Her hands cupped Portia’s breasts warmly, and Portia sighed contentedly, a breathy, lovely sound, as the Apprentice fondled her gently. 

“What?” The Apprentice asked casually, fighting to keep a straight face, “does that feel good?” Her thumbs stroked over Portia’s nipples, and this time the ministration was enough to evoke a low moan from the woman.

Portia met the Apprentice’s stare evenly, though despite the tease in her voice, her eyes reflected seriousness in a feverish glaze.

“Yeah, it does,” she said softly, “but not as good as _this_.”

At the last word, Portia crooked her finger and traced her knuckle along the seam of the Apprentice’s cunt. The Apprentice shuddered deeply, her breath catching in the motion, her hands faltering for a few moments.

“Mm.”

Portia used her free hand to secure the Apprentice’s hold on one of her breasts, her freckled hand covering the Apprentice’s, which cupped a soft globe of flesh, palm rasping against the hardened peak.

“Don’t wuss out on me now,” Portia all but purred, arching into the Apprentice’s touch. 

The Apprentice couldn’t answer, Portia’s fingers nestled deeper into her folds, occasionally teasing her entrance. The Apprentice rutted against her touch, feeling the way her muscles contracted, grasping for a hold before Portia’s fingers slipped coyly out. The flare of arousal was too much for the Apprentice’s usual restraint.

The Apprentice swept in, leaning heavily on Portia and bearing her full weight. Portia hummed into the kiss as the Apprentice’s lips descended heavily on her own, asking for more while declaring her intent to take it anyways. It only lasted for a few moments before Portia pressed against the Apprentice’s shoulders.

“Hey,” she whispered, and it was softer than anything she’d said before. 

The Apprentice’s eyes and throat stung, a wet, release of a sting, until her entrance squeezed emptily again, and the heat of her arousal dissipated the sting to be dealt with later.

“What?”

There was that push of Portia’s again, sending the Apprentice careening backwards into the plush carpet again. When the Apprentice landed, it was with great laze and disarray – limbs sprawled, perfect for Portia to find her home between the other woman’s legs.

Out of instinct, the Apprentice clenched her thighs together, as if to will away the heady scent of her desire, which had managed to curl upwards and reach her own senses – the Apprentice could only wonder how strong it was for Portia.

The younger Devorak’s grasp on her thighs was unyielding though.

“Humor me, just for today.”

These words felt strange. The Apprentice perched upwards into an upright position, balancing on her forearms so that she could search Portia’s face. 

“Grief,” Portia said, as if the word was enough to explain her first remark.

The Apprentice wished she didn’t understand – that was easier. She ignored the bottomless complexities swimming in Portia’s gaze and flopped backwards onto the carpet again.

“Ah…okay.”

That was all she had time to say, before Portia’s mouth had melded to the apex between her thighs, nose nestled amidst a tuft of curls. The Apprentice shuddered with her whole body.

It made the Apprentice feel dirty, citing Lucio’s funeral and then getting off to it. It was wrong, and crude, and a whole bunch of other words the Apprentice was in no place to string together as Portia’s tongue worked her, slickening her already wet slit, and slipping into her. It made the Apprentice’s arousal flare all over again. What was the phrase people said; dancing on one’s grave? And occasionally, pissing on it?

It wasn’t that different, the Apprentice thought as she ground herself against Portia’s mouth, dancing on a grave and fucking at a funeral. Through the movement of Portia’s lips and tongue, she brushed at the sensitive bundle of nerves nestled in the Apprentice’s wetness. Another gush of her slick seeped from her, though the Apprentice couldn’t tell where hers ended, and Portia’s saliva begun. A jolt of electricity flew up her spine, and the Apprentice whined.

“_Portia_,”

Portia said nothing, only kissed her harder, nuzzling into her heady scent, her tongue searching now for the sensitive area she’d just hit. Her eyes, clear from beneath thick, red lashes, roved upwards to the Apprentice’s face, studying her features as if they were tracks in the snow, a record of where her pleasure had passed through.

Portia’s fingers found their way to the Apprentice’s hipbones, clamping down to anchor her in place. The Apprentice’s stomach swooped, anticipating what her mind couldn’t piece together until Portia had already started her vicious lapping, tongue tracing into the grooves of her sex. The Apprentice jolted again, but Portia kept her grasp firm. Her thighs tightened around the woman’s shoulders as pleasure coiled tighter within her. She was so wet now she could feel the cold spot on the carpet already. 

Mercilessly, Portia continued her ministrations. She brought the flat of her tongue firmly against the Apprentice’s clit, and then the fingers at the Apprentice’s left hipbone left to dip under. The Apprentice arched into Portia as she felt something push into her, her entrance allowing Portia’s fingers to slip in easily with how wet she already was. 

The friction paired with the intense pangs flecking through her as Portia’s mouth busied itself with her sex had the Apprentice rutting. She felt the lewdness of her reactions with every quiver and tremble of her body. She was hyperaware of her breasts – how they jostled as she contorted with arousal, the hardened peeks of her nipples which stopped just short of aching. 

One hand reached up to grasp at a breast, thumb stroking over the Apprentice’s nipple, palm against the weighty resistance. Flecks of pleasure rippled through the Apprentice, and she ground against Portia’s mouth, feeling herself clench around Portia’s fingers. This did not go unnoticed by Portia, who fucked her faster, sinking three fingers in, to the knuckle. Her tongue teased at her clit once more before her soft lips melded to the Apprentice’s lower ones, kissing her sex, stoking her impending climax, and waiting eagerly for the rewards she’d reap as a result.

“_Ah_ –“

The Apprentice’s mouth fell open and she wanted desperately to cry out, she did not know who to call to though. 

She seized up then, the coiled tension at the pit of her stomach pulling her taut before she unwound before Portia, a spread, trembling mess. Somewhere amidst this fever fall, Portia’s hands found the Apprentice’s own, as they grasped fruitlessly at the fibers of carpet. Portia guided such ignorant hands back into her shock of red curls, which the Apprentice used to keep Portia firmly at her sex as the woman lapped at the new rush of wetness.

Portia’s hands went back to the Apprentice’s hip bone, scrabbling to hold her against her as well, and that’s how the Apprentice landed from her orgasmic freefall; in the arms of her lover, whose mouth still worked fervently at her.

As the Apprentice was coming down from her thrumming orgasm, the slippery sensitivities between her legs never lost their influence on her, and soon Portia’s mouth became too much.

“Please,” the Apprentice whimpered, “it’s too…”

Portia took great care in nuzzling deeper into the Apprentice’s slick sex, planting one more kiss in it for good measure, before pulling back and dragging her wrist across her mouth.

Despite how overstimulation had led the Apprentice to push Portia’s mouth away, the absence of her warmth and softness twined with the Apprentice’s own felt traumatic in a new way that she felt in the deepest crannies of her bones. The Apprentice held her arms out to Portia, begging her to return, and of course, Portia did.

_Man, this carpet really is soft_, the Apprentice thought as she and Portia lay tangled together on the middle of the floor. Portia’s arms were so plush and strong around her, pressing the Apprentice gently into the red head’s pillowy curves. Such supreme gentleness brought the Apprentice’s vulnerabilities to the surface, coaxing them out like where they were on the floor then, and in Portia’s arms would be the only place safe enough for them to emerge.

At the feeling of Portia’s thumb gently stroking across a swell of the Apprentice, that she felt too disembodied at that time to identify, hot, wet, surprising tears welled in her eyes.

The Apprentice’s vulnerabilities receded almost immediately, stuffed back into their hidey holes with the fresh shame that loomed. Crying? After sex?

The Apprentice bit sharply at her bottom lip, determined not to let the emotional breach see the light of day, though Portia felt her stiffen and immediately held her out at arm’s length to see what had changed.

“What is it?” Her thumb stroked again at the Apprentice’s cheek, tender. “What’s eating at you?”

“I don’t…it’s just…I mean –“ the Apprentice’s breath seized her, snatching her words away and turning them to dust. A lot of things were dust now, it seemed.

“Sshh,” Portia soothed, leaning forward to press a soft kiss to the Apprentice’s forehead. 

The Apprentice was still for a few moments, drinking in comfort from Portia’s arms wrapped around her. 

“It’s just,” the Apprentice started, “Lucio was…he was…”

“I know, I know.”

Portia’s fingers were stroking down the Apprentice’s back, carding through her hair. 

“A total _cunt_.”

Portia’s hand froze, momentarily caught off guard by the sudden turn the conversation took. When the Apprentice continued speaking again, Portia resumed her petting.

“He was awful and cruel and obnoxious, but…now he’s gone, and everyone’s just here to, what? Say goodbye?” The Apprentice’s voice grew louder with her momentum. “Are we really grieving for him? What about all the things he did? – because I think we should be grieving _those_. The years Asra lost with his family, mine and Nadia’s lost memories, Julian’s framing, Muriel’s pain…and what now? Those things are still traumas we all carry, even if the man who inflicted them is gone. What about _closure_?”

Portia’s hands lingered at where the Apprentice’s hair lead to the notches of her spine through skin. Her face had lost some of its usual mirth.

“I think…we do our best not to let any more years slip away,” she said carefully. “I think we say goodbye to Lucio today – all of him. I think we move on,” Portia sighed, and the Apprentice melted into the feel of breath moving through her body, leaning into the other woman, bending to the contours of her. There was one thing sex and grief had in common – they were both _exhausting_. “When we’re ready,” Portia added. 

“When we’re ready,” the Apprentice murmured in agreement, her eyes shutting.


End file.
